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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



Afterglov 




Frederic A. Hind^le^ 



BOSTON 

PRESS OF GEO. H. ELLIS, 141 FRANKLIN ST. 
1892 



COPYRIGHT 
BY GEO. H. ELLIS 



To 

who made Earth-life beautiful, 
and has suffmed with light 
the way to the 
Silent Land. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

Voices out of the Silence 9 

They had All Things Common 25 

Spiritual Awakening 43 

" The Star ! the Star ! " 63 



Voices out of the Silence. 



VOICES OUT OF THE SILENCE.* 



It has always been my custom, dear friends, to 
write, and to speak, out of my own deepest ex- 
periences. If any word of mine has ever touched 
or strengthened or comforted a human heart, it 
has been because it dealt with some joy or sor- 
row, some inspiration or some discipline which 
my own heart had known. Rarely, perhaps, have 
those who listened to me realized the fact, but I 
have come to feel that the Sunday hour, in which 
a little company of people listen to my voice, is 
consecrated to laying bare in their presence the 
innermost thoughts and longings of a life. 

Shall I change my habit now ? Because you 
will identify the process at every step, shall I 
suppress the spirit, and speak only surface 
thoughts to fill the hour, now ? I cannot do it. 

* The author's first discourse after the sudden death of his 
daughter. 



10 



AFTERGLOW. 



If to me the opportunities of this place have 
been consecrated ones, you may be sure they are 
infinitely more consecrated in this time of 
supreme grief and of holy joy. 

Voices out of the Silence ! Out of the Silence ! 
The Silence / Ah me ! with what significance 
that word falls upon the sorrowing heart ! Awful 
and eternal Silence, — that in the last analysis is 
the reality of realities. The budding leaves, the 
unfolding flowers, the singing birds, are children 
of the Silence. The deepest thought is of the 
Silence ; the deepest love is of the Silence. 
Birth is a doorway out of the Silence : death is a 
doorway into the Silence. The sweetest mes- 
sages the heart has ever known have come to it 
floating upon the wings of Silence. In hours of 
greatest ecstasy and in hours of greatest afflic- 
tion, we stand on the borders of the Silent Land, 
welcoming, oh ! so gladly the coming ; striving, 
oh ! so wistfully and longingly, to follow the dear 
departing guest. Solemn, awful, majestic, eter- 
nal Silence, since it breaks our hearts, and 
crushes our hopes, and takes the sunshine from 
out our lives. Kind, winsome, divine Silence, 
since it is sooner or later the home of all that 
makes life precious and beautiful and fair. 



VOICES OUT OF THE SILENCE. II 

" Into the Silent Land ! 
Ah, who shall lead us thither ? 
Clouds in the evening sky more darkly gather, 
And shattered wrecks lie thicker on the strand. 
Who leads us with a gentle hand 
Thither, oh, thither, 

Into the Silent Land ? 

" Into the Silent Land ! 
To you, ye boundless regions 
Of all perfection ! Tender morning visions 
Of beauteous souls ! The future's- pledge and band ! 
Who in life's duties sweet doth stand, 
Shall bear hope's tender blossoms 
Into the Silent Land ! 

" O Land ! O Land ! 
For all the broken-hearted 
The mildest herald by our fate allotted 
Beckons, and with inverted torch doth stand 
To lead us with a gentle hand 

To the land of the dear departed, 
Into the Silent Land." 

No hand material is discernible as we gaze long- 
ingly into those misty deeps, no dear familiar 
voice articulate falls like music on our ears as 
we stand listening at those heavenly portals; 
but there are spiritual hands which beckon, 
there are soul messages which come in ways as 
quick as thought and as sure as love. 



12 



AFTERGLOW. 



Inarticulate Voices out of the Silence, — what 
do they say to us who so miss their familiar 
tones, and the enrapturing inspiration of their 
earth-life song ? 

First, in order of time, they speak, do they 
not, of the mystery of life. Not of the mystery 
of death, as an isolated fact, but of the mystery 
of life, and of death as a part of life. How it is 
that the baby comes " out of the everywhere into 
the here " we do not know. How it is that the 
baby grows from more to more, through the win- 
some ways of childhood, through the innocent 
charms of pure maidenhood and guileless youth- 
hood, to the even greater charms of budding 
womanhood and manhood, we do not know. 
Why it is that some die young, and others live 
to a good old age, we do not know. Why it is 
that often those go whom the world seems most 
to need we do not know. The great plan is too 
deep, too broad, too high, too far-reaching for 
our finite comprehension. 

" A marvel seems the universe ; 
A miracle, our life and death ; 
A mystery which I cannot pierce, 
Around, above, beneath." 

A mystery, — how the rivulets find their way, 



VOICES OUT OF THE SILENCE. 13 

how the stars through pathless spaces ride, how 
mind responds to mind, and heart to heart, how 
both seem to participate in the ever-beginning 
and never-ending work of creation. The more 
one knows of it, the more one thinks of it, the 
more one is touched in the holy of holies of his 
life by it, the more does he bow his very soul in 
reverence and awe, the more does he become 
impressed with the greatness of that meaning 
which he does not comprehend. Struggle, suffer- 
ing, martyrdom, — these say to him, " Be still, and 
know that I am God." In vain men may talk of 
law, — whence came law? In vain preach of 
cause and effect, — whence the decree which 
marries cause and effect ? No world of conflict- 
ing powers this. At the last it is 

" One God, one law, one element, 
And one far off, divine event, 
To which the whole creation moves." 

From that immortal unity come all things, to 
that immortal unity tend all things, in that im- 
mortal unity live all things. How, in the infinite, 
that which to the finite seems discord becomes 
concord, that which seems cruelty becomes 
kindness, that which seems antagonism be- 



14 



AFTERGLOW. 



comes harmony, we do not know : it is a part of 
the impenetrable mystery. And the reverent 
soul can only say, when the tenderest chords are 
snapped, in language which the thought of a 
German poet suggests : Dear heart, thou cam'st 
with gentle step ; thou hast gone, leaving the 
gentle impress of thy footprints upon Earth- 
land ; from whence, and whither ? We know 
only out of God's hand, into God's hand. The 
same power which gave has taken. The same 
power which has always presided over our lives 
and the lives of all who are near and dear to us 
presides over them still. Our life dream has 
been disturbed, a shadow has fallen upon our 
hearts ; but it is the same universe which showed 
us the vision and flooded us with the sunshine. 
The questions why it is as it is, how it is as it 
is, we answer with Carlyle, " Sense knows not, 
faith knows not, only that it is through mystery 
to mystery, from God and to God." 

But what is the nature of the power under 
which all this life of joy and of sorrow, of purest 
happiness and of most direful suffering, is or- 
dered ? Never, dear friends, did the thought of 
the Eternal Goodness seem to me such a Rock 
of Ages as now. When one has held in the arms 



VOICES OUT OF THE SILENCE. 1 5 

of his love a nature which was the light, when 
one has seen heaven in an inexpressibly dear 
face, when one has experienced the high and 
growing companionship of a fresh, beautiful, 
unfolding religious soul, he has learned some- 
thing of that Goodness. It is inconceivable to 
him that the power out of whose ordering has 
come so much can be other than as good as that 
which it has created. It is inconceivable to him 
that so much which touched in life and touched 
in death all the better feelings of our natures 
could be at the mercy of wild, material forces ; 
that the thoughts and loves and aspirations of 
the years could be obliterated by the baleful 
issues of a fleeting second. The very grief that 
must have way is the spirit's own and all-suffi- 
cient vindicator. The inspiration of an unsullied 
memory is the spirit's own and all-sufficient vin- 
dicator. The budding promises crowding thick 
upon each other are the spirit's own and all- 
sufficient vindicators. Not for us to picture in 
detail the life we cannot see, not for us to pene- 
trate the depths of unfathomable being; but, oh, 
the future must be very good just because the 
past has been so good, the future must be very 
full of fruition just because the past has been so 



i6 



AFTERGLOW. 



full of promise. Is it possible to conceive of a 
more complete demonstration of wisdom and of 
love than that which comes to us in a dear, pure, 
sweet, and holy life ? And shall we doubt the 
wisdom and the love which have once been so 
manifested to us ? Speculation may assert itself 
in our hours of leisure; but what magic power 
has the heart in the crucial moments of life to 
drive all doubt away ! 

" No chamber of pain but has some hidden door 

That promises release ; 
No solitude so drear but yields its store 
Of thought and inward peace. 

" No night so wild but brings the constant sun 
With love and power untold ; 
No time so dark but through its woof there run 
Some blessed threads of gold. 

" O Light Divine ! we need no fuller test 
That all is ordered well. 
We know enough to trust that all is best 
Where love and wisdom dwell." 

Come, sacred memories ! come, fond hopes ! 
come, heavenly inspirations of goodness we 
have known and still know ! teach us to trust, as 
little children, in the goodness we cannot see; 



VOICES OUT OF THE SILENCE. 17 

teach us to subordinate more and more the heart 
pangs to the heart exultations, the ineffaceable 
grief to the eternal joy. In more subtle ways 
than we have ever known, still let the sunshine 
stream in ; still let us feel that around us all is 
beauty, that above us all is blue. 

But, if the Silence speaks of the eternal mys- 
tery and the Eternal Goodness, it has also 
another voice which I cannot fail to hear. It 
speaks of the essential spirituality of life, of the 
indestructibility of character. The last time I 
stood in this place I said in words which were 
soon to be emphasized to me with a weight of 
which I could not have dreamed : — " As the 
years roll by with seemingly increasing speed, as 
the dear ones of the heart vanish in increasing 
procession from mortal vision, do we not look a 
little more to the heavenly and a little less to 
the earthly treasures? It seems so to me. It 
seems as if every grave which has opened for 
some beloved comrade, some honored citizen, 
some trusted counsellor, some dear one who 
once centred all of life and love tenderly in us, 
or some dear one in whom we have centred life 
and love, has a voice saying, Look in, look on, 
look up. The greatest things in all the world 



iS 



AFTERGLOW. 



are not houses and lands and the products 
which we buy and sell : the greatest things in all 
the world are the imponderable things, — the 
thoughts, the sympathies, the loves. These 
know no space, no time. These bind us in in- 
visible chains to each other here : they bind us 
in invisible chains to each other there." With 
what force these words come back to me now ! 

The form so dear to us, the color of the cheek, 
the serene, penetrating depth of the eye, — these 
derive all their dear preciousness, though perhaps 
we do not always fully realize it, — these derive 
all their dear preciousness from that which 
they contain and express. " Millions of spiritual 
beings walk the earth," — beings who at their 
best carry about them an atmosphere freighted 
with divine sympathies and longings. "We 
read of one such, He was a man of sorrows, and 
acquaiiited with grief" and the ages give way 
to a sense of inexpressible nearness. In hours 
of gloom, messages of love, such as indicate the 
sense of a share in our sorrow, come to us, and 
somehow finite and infinite arms seem about us. 
And most of all, as we slowly, very, very slowly 
regain possession of ourselves, the presence 
which at first we thought all gone seems to 



VOICES OUT OF THE SILENCE. 19 

hover over us, seems to whisper in our ears, and 
to put its arms, in the old way, about our neck. 
In the holy hush, the intellect stands still, and 
the heart in undisputed sway says, always and 
forever one. The love is still ours, the inspira- 
tion is still ours, because these were and are of 
those heavenly treasures which no accident of 
time can touch. There is not a precious thought, 
there is not a heart-pang, concerning a true and 
beautiful life, which does not say, amid the 
wreck of matter, The real I still lives and still 
loves. It is what is excellent which makes the 
heart of the dear one a shrine to which we come 
as if in worship ; and every noble quality which 
seems to succumb to death repeats anew the 
eternal anthem, — 

" What is excellent, 
As God lives, is permanent." 

Thou art not gone, being gone. Having been, 
thou still must be. Whatsoever of good has 
passed from out thy life to bless us, and make 
our lives more rich and fair, shall still come and 
abide with us, a sanctifying influence, if only we 
keep our natures open to its touch. 

Ah ! this suggests that over every new-made 
grave there is another voice trying to make 



20 



AFTERGLOW. 



itself heard, — a gentle, loving but firm voice 
summoning to the days and the duties to come. 
It does not say to me, Grief is weakness, a broken 
heart is a shame ; it does not say to me, Separa- 
tion is the inevitable, the end has come, shut the 
door upon the past, and begin all over again : it 
says, Consecrate thyself anew to high and noble 
causes, do what thou canst with thy little powers 
in the service of truth and of mankind, but do it 
as in an ever-near spiritual presence closer to thee 
than thy thought, and moulding as never before 
the innermost impulses of thy life. Oh ! there 
are times when we need the voice of the prophet, 
there are times when the stern brow and the 
firm muscle seem to indicate the coming of the 
hour and the man ; but more persistent, more 
heavenly, is the still small voice and the quiet, 
all-pervasive influence of a serene and harmo- 
nious character. Cultivate that ; see to it that 
death tightens rather than loosens the cords that 
bind thee to that; live as in the constant in- 
fluence and blessing of that; and all the new 
duties as they come, and the old duties as they 
return, shall be more worthily performed. Thy 
judgments shall be mellowed, thy aims broad- 
ened, thy motives clarified. An invisible pres- 



VOICES OUT OF THE SILENCE. 21 

ence shall go before thee, beckoning thee in the 
ways of the spirit to the higher life. 

How often, in times past, as some beautiful 
sunset view has touched my being, as the inspira- 
tion of the mountains or the sea has filled my 
soul, or the wondrous sublimity of the stars at 
night has inspired within me the mood of rever- 
ence and awe, have I exclaimed, This is a beauti- 
ful world ! It — is — a — beautiful — world, — 
not alone because of its inanimate charms, but 
because of the beautiful minds and hearts and 
souls which walk its ways to bless it. It will 
always seem more beautiful for the noble and 
guileless son : it will always seem more beautiful 
for the sweet and loving daughter. Hard, in- 
expressibly hard to bear is the great desolation 
which is upon us ; but out of the Silence, through 
the mystery, we can sense the Eternal Good- 
ness, we can realize the spiritual reality, we can 
be strengthened and purified for the coming 
duty. Time after time the old pangs will return, 
month after month and year after year we shall 
go on in great sadness of heart ; but some new 
good will be born to us, some gentler nature will 
come to us. Beauty will rise from the ashes, 
roses will blossom from among the thorns. 



22 



AFTERGLOW. 



" Since she died, to me is one thing sure, 
There must be an eternity ; 
For over my cleft heart 
Feel I an Eternal Life sweeping, 
Since she died. 

" Since she died, a strong wall 
Of loneliness surrounds me ; 
Fruitless the invasion 
Of joy flows in upon me, 
Since she died. 

" Since she died, profoundest calm 
Sinks deep into my heart ; 
The soul closes the eyes, 
And divines and dreams more than it thinks, 
Since she died." 

Eternal Goodness within the mystery; im- 
mortal beauty everywhere, — I will try to dream 
of these the more reverently and tenderly, since 
they have touched my soul in a life so beautiful 
and true. 



They had 
Things Common. 



I 



THEY HAD ALL THINGS 
COMMON. 



What a wonderful and suggestive picture that 
is of Peter standing before the multitude and 
summoning them to repent and be baptized ! 
So much are they moved by his appeal they sell 
their possessions, give to every man as he has 
need, and have all things common. I say it is 
a wonderful and suggestive picture. Wonderful, 
because of its illustration of the power of spirit- 
ual truth to make men one in unselfish devotion 
to universal needs; suggestive, because of the 
thought to which it almost inevitably leads — that 
not only in matters of free choice men may, but 
in matters of destiny men do, have all things 
common. 

The realization of this truth grows with the 
cultivation of the tendency to seek points of 
agreement rather than points of difference, and 
it receives new emphasis with every deep expe- 



26 



AFTERGLOW. 



rience which comes to the individual or to hu- 
manity. Take, for example, the idea of the unity 
of the race from the most superficial point of 
view, — the physical structure and characteris- 
tics. The time was when, noting differences, 
men made the color of the skin or the nature of 
the hair determining factors. In our own coun- 
try the system of chattel slavery rested on the 
assumption that a black skin was the indication 
of an inferiority so great as to justify the treat- 
ment of those possessing it as a different order 
of beings from those possessed of a white skin. 
To such an extent was this thought carried that 
people in the non-slave-holding States, who had 
any trace of the condemned color in their com- 
plexion, were liable to be arrested and sent into 
slavery. Well, that was the superficial, the lit- 
erally skin-deep view. With the growth of sci- 
entific methods and the removal of social bias 
by a great moral awakening, our eyes were 
opened to some more fundamental facts. It was 
discovered that the negro had an osseous struct- 
ure centring about a vertebral column, very 
much like a white man ; that he had a muscular 
and veinous and nervous system, very much like 
a white man ; that he had stomach, heart, lungs, 



THEY HAD ALL THINGS COMMON. 27 

very much like a white man; that, while the 
facial angle might vary, the quality of the hair 
vary, the color of the skin vary, from more or 
less external causes, these vital factors of erect 
position, of digestion, respiration, locomotion, 
were constant. And with this discovery were set 
free those influences which have utterly under- 
mined the old conceptions of race, and taught 
what a unity there is within all the variety of 
form and complexion and speech. So that now 
it is not too much to say that, physically speak- 
ing, humanity, though diversified in non-essen- 
tials, in essentials have all things common. This 
is the outcome of scientific study of man as a 
purely physical being, — a common origin, a com- 
mon nature, a common destiny. 

Look now, for a moment, at the unity of hu- 
manity in the universe of mind. At first men 
noticed the differences in the thought-products 
of peoples. They forgot that any thought-prod- 
uct, however small, presupposed the power to 
think ; that any thought-product, however great, 
only presupposed the same power to think ; that 
the difference was one of degree rather than of 
kind, easily due to differences of environment 
rather than to differences of nature. But every 



28 



AFTERGLOW. 



discovery of thought in a poor, hunted slave, 
every discovery of thought in a despised class 
or race, every discovery of thought in primitive 
and barbaric men, has driven the lesson home 
with a significance not to be mistaken. The es- 
sential thing is to have the ability to think and 
to formulate thought. In these respects most 
ancient Aryan and most modern Yankee have all 
things common. German differs from French, 
and both from English : all differ from Chinese, 
and Chinese from sister tongues ; but language 
is at last one, the power to formulate thought in 
speech is one. So we say, and say truly, the 
great minds of the world belong not, as has been 
held, to a race : they belong to humanity. In 
externals they are special, but in internals and 
essentials they are universal. It would be a 
thankless task to try to demonstrate that the man 
who wrote, — 

" Earth's insufficiency here grows to event, 
The indescribable here it is done, 
The eternal womanly leadeth us on," 

is less mine because his was not the tongue that 
Shakspere spake, or that the man who wrote 

" The quality of mercy is not strained ; 
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven 



THEY HAD ALL THINGS COMMON. 29 

Upon the place beneath : it is twice blessed ; 
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes," 

is not the German's benefactor, because his was 
not the tongue which Goethe spake. The minds 
which receive the truth and transmit its light to 
men are brother minds. Hindu hermit-saint, 
Parsee devotee, Chinese sage, Judean carpen- 
ter's son, Arab prophet, belong to the same com- 
pany : they are all ours, and they belong to all 
men. Mind everywhere inherits the achieve- 
ments of mind everywhere ; and, mentally as well 
as physically, we have — the children of men all 
round the globe have — all things common. 

And, if all this is true of the universe of phys- 
ical and mental life, what shall be said of the 
universe of heart and feeling ? Nothing, I sup- 
pose, is more common, and in some respects 
more natural, than for people to feel that they 
have a monopoly of the affectional nature, or at 
least have it in larger and more pre-eminent de- 
gree than others have it. Especially have men 
been accustomed to think of certain classes as 
stony-hearted and of other classes as too de- 
graded in the scale of civilization to be sus- 
ceptible to the finer touches of feeling. How 
can it be possible that there is anything common 



AFTERGLOW. 



between the love which draws poets together and 
that which draws the toiling millions together? 
How can it be possible that there is anything in 
common between the love which, having sum- 
moned a little life out of the everywhere, watches 
tenderly over it in its budding and blossoming, 
and gives all it possesses and all it is to make it 
true and beautiful and good, and the love which 
reluctantly accepts and reluctantly trains and 
reluctantly serves in smallest degree its off- 
spring ? " It is only a poor sort of happiness," 
says Romola to Tito's boy, Lillo, " that could ever 
come by caring very much about our own nar- 
row pleasures. We can only have the highest 
happiness, such as goes along with being a great 
man, by having wide thoughts and much feeling 
for the rest of the world as well as ourselves.'' 
How can it be possible that there can be any- 
thing common between a love thus expressed 
and that which seeketh its own and knoweth 
only its own satisfactions ? And so we paint our 
companion pictures, fancy they stand for antago- 
nistic realities, — on the one hand looking upward 
to the light of heaven, on the other hand looking 
downward to the darkness of the pit. But ex- 
perience in time opens our eyes, and we learn 



THEY HAD ALL THINGS COMMON. 3 1 

the superficiality of our own judgments. We 
learn that the human heart may be infinitely ten- 
der under a covering of rags ; we learn that the 
Scrooges have their sensitive spots, sure to re- 
spond when rightly appealed to ; we learn how 
easy it is for a little girl to find her way to the 
heart of the roughest man. There are awkward 
men and there are polished men, there are men 
of silence and men eloquent in words ; but 
when love-light touches the eyes, and the thrill 
of responsive sympathy moves the muscles of 
face and hand, it may be much the same thing 
in the one as in the other. All genuine feeling 
is eloquent, all sincere sympathy has a divine 
gentility which shames our cheap veneer of 
superficial manners. The godlike flame which 
holds supreme sway in the presence of the object 
of affection will never appear to us less godlike 
as we find some portion of it was never wanting 
in any human heart, and learn that it is the di- 
vinity within us leading us up and on. There 
was something in common between the engineer 
who, as his engine sped along in the darkness of 
the night, made it whistle to his wife in the dis- 
tant cottage, "I love thee," and the poet who, in 
the quiet of his study, wrote in rhythmic beauty, 



32 



AFTERGLOW. 



" Not as all other women are 
Is she who to my soul is dear." 

The Brownings and Burns certainly had great 
differences both as to theme and style, but all 
three sang of love in such ways as to win our 
hearts. Love is the god to whose shrine sooner 
or later all are drawn in a varied but common 
worship. 

Not less do we have things common in the 
moral realm. It is hardly necessary to say that 
in some of us the moral impulse is stronger than 
in others ; but few will claim, to-day, that there 
is any such intrinsic difference of moral nature 
between those who get into jail and those who 
keep out of jail, as was once supposed. It used 
to be the thought that society, through govern- 
ment as its organized representative, possessed 
the right and had imposed upon it the duty of 
punishing men for crime. The highest civiliza- 
tion has entirely discarded that notion now, as- 
suming only such power over the criminal as is 
protective to the community and educational to 
him. Whence this change of view and of prac- 
tice ? First and chiefly in the dawning percep- 
tion that no man is wholly and unqualifiedly 
good and no man is totally depraved. All men 



THEY HAD ALL THINGS COMMON. 33 

are brothers means that all men have much in 
common, and that sentiment stirs within us some- 
what of the fellow-feeling which makes wondrous 
kind. How easy it is to select some weak spot 
of our own, to think of some temptation against 
which we are a little vulnerable, and to see how 
it might have been with us, had our inherited 
tendencies and our educational surroundings 
been less favorable ! How easy it is to predict 
the future of two babies, one born of love, the 
other of passion, one surrounded with an atmos- 
phere of heaven, the other with an atmosphere 
of hell ! With our short-sighted vision we think 
we see a terrible gulf yawning between what we 
call virtue and vice. But to the eye of Infinite 
Justice, seeing the innermost motives of man 
and how those motives have eternity for their 
opportunity, there can be no such differences 
in the children who have been made members of 
one great family and had implanted in them 
mutual love. Surely, there are sins to be hated ; 
but it does not follow that those who yield to 
them in little or great degree are to be hated, too. 
If so, there are few of us who would not have 
cause to hate ourselves as well as our neighbors. 
The more humane and the more divine view dis- 



34 



AFTERGLOW. 



tinguishes between the sinner and the sin, and 
feels with Portia the sublimity of mercy. A com- 
mon sense of moral danger, a common recogni- 
tion of a common tendency to yield at some 
point where we ought to be strong, — this it is 
which has recalled and is recalling humanity 
from its harsh and barbarous theories, and has 
pressed home to its innermost consciousness the 
conviction that Jesus and Judas are one. And 
here, again, we do not lose, we gain, in the mean- 
ing and the sublimity of life. That in me which 
responds to the appeal of truth, that in me which 
is moved by the touch of feeling, that in me 
which is nerved by the summons of conscience, 
is not so small that it can be monopolized by one 
little man or by fifty millions of little men. It is 
the magnificent incarnation of the Infinite and 
Universal which holds planets and suns in un- 
conscious obedience, and endows man, wherever 
found, with necessitated freedom. It has been 
demonstrated to the satisfaction of social science 
that one portion of the world cannot get very far 
ahead of any other portion, so closely do we 
march to destiny abreast. And it is certainly a 
beautiful and uplifting and refining thought that 
highest and lowest, strongest and weakest, are 



THEY HAD ALL THINGS COMMON. 35 

linked together by one common, silken chain, 
which may sometimes give, but can never break. 
Come up higher ! is the divine call to every human 
being. In answer to it, all classes and conditions 
gather in like aspirations for a better life, such 
as travel through prison walls as easily as over 
the counters of trade, and rise as naturally from 
filth and rags as from the carpeted aisles of 
cathedrals dim, and, behold ! in moral discern- 
ment and endeavor they have all things common. 

Finally, it has been discovered that what we 
call the spiritual nature and what we call spirit- 
ual experiences men have in common. It was 
not always so. Indeed, in the ascending series 
of common ties this is the last to be recognized. 
The physical resemblances are apparent to the 
external senses ; mental likenesses are seen with 
greater or less clearness in the early processes 
of mind ; the outgoings of the affections soon 
hint to us the oneness of human heart expe- 
rience ; and the common struggles in the realm 
of morals begin and continue in every conscious 
stage of development. But the conviction that 
all men have spiritual experiences in common 
comes as something more than a theory, — only 
when we have had some revelation of the neces- 



36 



AFTERGLOW. 



sity of a spiritual philosophy to account for the 
universe of which we are denizens and of the 
life we are called upon to live in it. At the risk 
of seeming personal, I feel it to be at once a 
sacred privilege and duty to bear my testimony 
on this point ; and I do so the more freely 
because I know that I shall be speaking for 
others as well as for myself. I cannot tell how 
many poems, which I have always loved, have 
come of late to have for me a deepened tender- 
ness, because I see in them now the expression 
of a heart sorrow so like my own. I cannot tell 
what a revelation it has been to me that thoughts 
which I had often cherished, and certainly some- 
times expressed, — when flowing from my pen as 
the irrepressible outpouring of a broken heart, 
touched, perchance, by a degree of finer sensi- 
bility than it had before known, — have fitted 
directly into the experience of so many others, 
and enabled me, as the mouthpiece of a sainted 
life, to convey so much of its spiritual sunshine 
in the hour of their anguish to other souls. 

You and I think sometimes, dear friends, that 
tragedy has stalked into our homes and hearts 
as it never did before into any home or heart, 
and never can do again. It is not so ; and it 



THEY HAD ALL THINGS COMMON. 37 

does not make our grief less deep or sacred 
than it would otherwise be because it is not so. 
There is a certain divinizing influence for us, a 
certain consecrating influence for us, in the fel- 
lowship of sorrow ; and the world will always 
feel a little more respectfully and reverently 
toward any one of whom it can say, " He was a 
man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief." No ! 
deepest disappointment, hardest separation, most 
untold agony, sooner or later come to all. And 
out of the sympathy of the common lot grows 
much of the resignation, the subdued and chas- 
tened sweetness, which lead us to the feet of 
the inevitable in holy confidence and trust ; a 
confidence and trust not less holy because in 
the silence many souls are struggling to attain 
unto it. And the faith that somehow, in ways we 
cannot see and understand, this external life is 
not all of it ; that what " God so blest once can- 
not so prove accurst" ; that we are not the vic- 
tims, but in the end the masters, of material 
forces ; that " life is just a stuff to try the soul's 
strength on " ; and that that soul is at home in 
this universe not less when beyond than when 
within our ken, truth still its aim, beauty still its 
atmosphere, goodness still the law of its being, 



3» 



AFTERGLOW. 



this faith, — how it is strengthened, how it is 
broadened, how it is deepened, by the reflection 
that it has a foothold in every human soul, and 
is expressive of the natural yearning of every 
human heart ! 

They had all things common. We have all 
things common, — all the most essential, all the 
most enduring, all the most divine things. Not 
our houses and lands, but the beauty with which 
they blossom and bear fruit. Not our wearing 
apparel, but the way in which that ministers to 
its noblest uses. Not wealth and the commodi- 
ties of various kinds which wealth procures and 
includes, but weal with all the conditions that 
favor it and all the opportunities it brings. The 
best things cannot be monopolized. The best 
things are not diminished by spending. In the 
realm of thought, in the realm of love, in the 
realm of spiritual and moral aspiration, — yes, 
even in the realm of physical development, — we 
give to have. As the old lines run, — 

" Hand in hand with angels, — 
Blessed so to be ; 
Helped are all the helpers, — 
Giving light, they see." 

The sunshine belongs to us all ; the clear, blue 
sky belongs to us all ; the stars belong to us all. 



THEY HAD ALL THINGS COMMON. 39 

And just so the sunshine of the pure, warm 
heart, the clear blue of a heavenly character, the 
bright shining star of a beautiful life, — these 
belong to all who come within the reach of their 
influence. 

" One harvest from thy field," writes Emerson, 

" One harvest from thy field 

Homeward brought the oxen strong ; 
A second crop thine acres yield, 
Which I gather in a song." 

And that second crop, gathered from the great 
field of the universe in the perpetual and wor- 
shipful singing of the poetic heart, is the real 
crop which no oxen are strong enough to draw, 
and nothing less than the homes of universal 
humanity great enough to cover. How small it 
makes all our disposition to grasp at mere mate- 
rial things, and our attempts to get ahead of 
each other in the pursuit of material things, 
seem, when we realize that the things which 
moth and rust cannot corrupt, and which thieves 
breaking through cannot steal, are shared in 
common, and are even more plenteous because 
of the sharing. 

How infinitely gentle and considerate of each 
other this thought of common inheritance and 
common experience in all that renders life most 



40 



AFTERGLOW. 



precious and inspiring ought to make us ! How 
much of the disposition to quarrel it ought to 
quell in us ; how it ought to temper every harsh 
word and every harsh thought ; how it ought to 
discourage suspicion and jealousy and doubt; 
how it ought to warm men with loving sympathy, 
and weld them into brothers ! It is in the fire 
of deep individual, social, and national expe- 
rience that men become most aware of the unity 
which links them together. How blessed the 
thought that it is the most superficial experiences 
which tend to divide, and the most internal ex- 
periences which tend to unite ! 

" The Holy Supper is kept, indeed, 
In whatso we share with another's need ; 
Not what we give, but what we share, 
For the gift without the giver is bare. 
Who gives himself with his alms feeds three, — 
Himself, his hungering neighbor, and me." 

We have all things common. Whoso through 
heart-pang or heart-ecstasy, whoso under the 
cloud or in the sunshine, whoso at the gate of 
life we call birth or at the gate of life we call 
death, has his eyes opened to this truth, has 
found the Holy Grail. It is in his character, 
touched with a diviner comprehension and toned 
to a diviner calm. 



Spiritual Awakening. 



SPIRITUAL AWAKENING. 



I want to take for my text, friends, to-day, 
Robert Browning's great poem, " Saul." The 
Hebrew king is forsaken of the Lord. Things 
are going wrong with him. He is troubled in 
mind and despondent in mood. As they used 
to say, he is possessed of an evil spirit. Da- 
vid, whose fame is well known, has been sent 
for, to come with the wonderful music of his 
harp, that he may try its power of restoration. 
In anxious expectancy, the attendants await his 
arrival. 

"At last thou art come," says one of them to 
the harpist, as he greets him with reverent affec- 
tion, and tells him how for a space of three days 
not a sound hath escaped from Saul, to indicate 
that his strife with the evil spirit has ended. 
Then David kneels in prayer, rises to his feet, 



44 



AFTERGLOW. 



runs to the tent, prays once more, and enters, 
calling to the king, " Here is David, thy ser- 
vant." No voice replies ; and he gropes about 
in the darkness until a sunbeam bursting through 
the tent-roof shows Saul " drear and stark, blind 
and dumb " in his agony. Then David tunes 
his harp, and plays the various melodies through 
which his soul is accustomed to find its channel 
of expression, — first the tune all the sheep know 
at folding-time, then that which tempts the quail 
to leave his mate, then what stirs the crickets 
and what calms the jerboa, then the wine-song 
of the reapers, then the funeral song, then the 
glad chant of the marriage, then the great march 
of the temple-building, and then the chorus as the 
Levites go up to the altar in glory. Here Saul 
groans ; and the player stops, holds his breath, 
and listens. The king's head moves ; and David, 
encouraged, sings to him of our manhood's prime 
vigor, of the goodness of mere living, of the joy 
of the physical life, of the mission Saul had re- 
ceived from his father, of the last testimony of his 
mother that all was for best, of his brothers 
and friends of his boyhood, his boyhood of won- 
der and hope ; then of how he has become the 
head of a great people, — 



SPIRITUAL AWAKENING. 



45 



*' High ambition and deeds which surpass it, fame crowning 
them, — all 

Brought to blaze on the head of one creature, — King 
Saul!" 

Then as he ceases, having painted to the king 
the record of his own life, David in the fulness 
of his mood cries aloud, " Saul ! " and waits the 
thing that shall follow. A long shudder thrills 
the tent, and the king stands before David re- 
stored. And now what shall the singer do to 
sustain him whom his song has restored ? He 
takes again his harp, and sings of the spiritual 
life; how Saul's deeds shall live after him; how 
the marble and the pen shall tell of what genera- 
tions yet unborn owe to the mighty king. As 
he ends his song, his harp falling forward, he 
becomes aware that his head is resting just above 
Saul's knee ; that Saul's hand is laid 

"Soft and grave, but in mild settled will," 

on his brow ; that Saul bends back his head 

" With kind power, — 
All his face back, intent to peruse it, as men do a flower." 

And looking up reverently, with heart melted in 
love for him, he says to the king, — 



46 



AFTERGLOW. 



" Could I help thee, my father, inventing a bliss, 
I would add, to that life of the past, both the future and 
this : » 

I would give thee new life altogether, — as good, ages 
hence, 

As this moment, — had love but the warrant love's heart 
to dispense ! " 

And with this reflection the truth flashes upon 
David's consciousness. Would I do all this from 
love, would I sacrifice comfort, happiness, life 
itself, I whose knowledge shrivels at wisdom 
laid bare, I whose forethought seems as nothing 
to the Infinite Care ; and will not God's love 
order the best for its creature ? 

" Would I fain in my impotent yearning do all for this 
man, 

And dare doubt He alone shall not help him who yet 
alone can ? " 

Would it have entered my mind to have given 
this Saul half the dower he possesses ? And yet, 
thus much being given, doth it not enter my 
mind to go on, and give one thing more, — the 
best? 

" 'Tis not what man does which exalts him, but what man 
would do ! 

See the king — I would help him, but cannot, the wishes 
fall through. 



SPIRITUAL AWAKENING. 47 

Could /wrestle to raise him from sorrow, grow poor to 
enrich, 

To fill up his life, starve my own out, I would, — knowing 
which, 

I know that my service is perfect. Oh, speak through me 
now ! 

Would I suffer for him that I love ? So wouldst thou — 
so wilt thou ! 

" O Saul, it shall be 
A Face like my face that receives thee ; a Man like to me 
Thou shalt love, and be loved by, forever ; a Hand like 
this hand 

Shall throw open the gates of new life to thee ! 
See the Christ stand ! " 

Behold, the supreme offering of love, the sac- 
rifice of everything dear, of everything which 
makes self in the worldly sense, — this shall save 
thee, this shall bless and redeem and divinize 
thee. 

As this flood of spiritual light fills the inner- 
most recesses of David's being, all trouble 
withers from earth, the morning dawns with a 
new tenderness, the gray of the hills takes on 
new intensity, all things in Nature feel and grow 
reverent before the new law. The flowers re- 
spond to it in their upturned faces ; the heart of 
the cedar and the vine-bowers are moved by it ; 



4 s 



AFTERGLOW. 



" And the little brooks witnessing murmur, persistent and 
low, 

With their obstinate, all but hushed voices, ' E'en so, it 
is so ! ' " 

Every sublime life, deep in its experiences of 
joy and of sorrow, of struggle and of triumph, 
symbolizes the joys and the sorrows, the struggles 
and the triumphs, of our common humanity. 
Every great poem which records such a life is 
your history and mine, written large. The best 
have been cast down as we are cast down : we 
may be lifted up as the best are lifted up. 
Mental agony, spiritual doubt, the despair of 
faith in unseen and eternal things, — these are as 
old as man himself, and as new as this hour 
sacred to their consideration. How to get rid of 
them, how to summon in their stead that faith 
and hope and love which with the creative touch 
say, Let there be light, — this is the ever-present 
problem. It lurks within the experience which 
men have sometimes called being without God 
in the world, and in a way it is solved by that 
process which men have called experiencing 
religion. This is the common chord we strike 
when we get within the formal expressions of 
creeds and dogmas to that reality which, with 
however poor success, they all aim to voice. 



SPIRITUAL AWAKENING. 



49 



There are times when great darkness settles 
over us, demoralizing our mood, until in no slight 
degree we become, as was Saul, spiritually drear 
and stark, blind and dumb. It may be due to 
mere physical experience, to weakness and dis- 
ease, sapping our vitality, undermining our 
nerves with pain, and depriving us of that man- 
hood's prime vigor which constitutes so large an 
element in the great joy of living. It may be 
due to mental obliquity, to ignorance, and all 
the ills which follow in its train, placing man at 
almost hopeless odds in the battle for existence, 
making him a poor calculator, at the mercy of 
forces he should be able to control. It may be 
due to the stunting or the blighting of the af- 
fections, to such ordering of circumstances as 
leaves a human heart without the supreme satis- 
factions of love, to disappointments, to betrayed 
confidences, to the parting with the near and the 
dear. It may be due to an undeveloped moral 
nature or a deteriorated moral nature, with no 
power to make nice distinctions between right 
and wrong, and with no keenness for those great 
moral issues which constitute a people's bread of 
life ; and it may be due — it is due most of all — 
to the lack of spiritual perception, spiritual im- 



AFTERGLOW. 



pulse, spiritual longing, which alone have the 
almighty commission to consecrate the physical, 
to divinize the mental, to purify the affectional, 
and to soften the moral to the highest and most 
enduring ends. In the darkness Saul groans. In 
the darkness you and I and all men sit at times, 
in doubt and despair and agony. Evil of some 
kind in our individual experience crushes or 
startles or stuns us. Evil in the lives of our 
fellow-men all about us, seemingly omnipotent, 
enslaving men through their appetites, dropping 
them by the wayside in the competitions of work, 
losing them, and all that touches them most 
tenderly, in the rolling on of great systems, 
which seem, like great corporations, to have no 
souls, — evil of some kind stares us in the face. 
Every nation desolated by war speaks of it, 
every race stunted in its development speaks of 
it, poverty speaks of it, vice speaks of it, crime 
speaks of it. Individually and collectively, we 
are at the mercy of laws which ask neither of our 
desires nor of our deserts before they stab us to 
the heart. Darkness disturbed only by a groan, 
until the sweet singer comes, the good angel of 
life, and, untwining the lilies from his harp-strings, 
plays some tune which shall lift us to an altitude 



SPIRITUAL AWAKENING. 



worthy our destiny as men and women, — comes 
and appeals to the germ of light which, though it 
may sometimes only flicker, is never extinct in 
the human soul, and causes it in some way to 
brighten into a burning flame; plays the tunes 
which he has gathered on the hillsides where at 
nightfall the sheep come home, in the fields 
where the cricket sings, away off in space 
among the stars, in the deepest recesses of the 
mind and the loftiest exaltations of the heart of 
man. 

He sings first to us of the service which every- 
thing good in a human being — and every human 
being does have some good in him — renders to 
truth and humanity. He recounts to us our boy- 
hood's time, our boyhood of wonder and hope, 
the mission we received from our father, our 
mother's last message of faith, the companionship 
of brothers and friends, the response which has 
come to every true word we have uttered and 
every true thing we have done. He pictures to 
us how somewhere there is some human heart, 
perhaps many human hearts, full of thankful- 
ness for us, to whom our living is an inspiration, 
and who on the tablets of their innermost beings 
and with the pen of their intensest moods will 



5 2 



AFTERGLOW. 



keep our memories green after we have passed 
on. Service of truth and humanity, not necessa- 
rily great service, not necessarily extended ser- 
vice, such as leads a people to say King, but 
humble service, little faithful service, such as 
may be recognized only in reverent silence as it 
mounts the throne in some individual life, — 
this is the tune which may sometimes cause 
sunny thoughts and sunnier feelings to come 
flocking about us and within us, this is the 
strain which may sometimes drive the darkness 
away. 

But, if something more is necessary, then the 
harpist sings of the devotion of love and its 
meaning, — the devotion of human love; of that 
sentiment which knows no race, no clime, no 
condition, which conquers the spirit of the 
counting-room and the street, which presides 
over the cradle, which tarries last at the grave, 
which puts heroism into the meanest life and a 
silken chain around the stoutest heart, which, 
believing the best of its object, idealizes it, and 
cherishes it not less because it has within it the 
power of suggesting the ideal. It makes life 
seem inexpressibly good to us, as it reminds us 
of the love which has watched over us and 



SPIRITUAL AWAKENING. 



53 



guided us, and helped our tottering steps over 
what seemed discouraging obstacles on untried 
ways ; makes life seem good to us, as it reminds 
us of the opportunities that have been ours to 
form the sacred relations of home and friendship, 
and to feel those inspirations which come from 
centring our desires, our ambitions, all our 
deepest longings, in some soul (summoned by 
ourselves, perchance, from out the unseen world) 
which is, with a gentleness no words can 
express, responsive to our own. To love and to 
be loved, to feel the warmth of close personal 
relations, — this it is which gives color and rich- 
ness to life, this it is which arches the sky and 
makes the rose red, and this it is which can 
vivify us into life and cheer and beatitude, when 
gloom and despondency and doubt have demor- 
alized our moods. 

" Thus held he me there with his great eyes that scrutinized 
mine, — 

And, oh, all my heart how it loved him ! " 

There is something in that sentiment which 
bears to our ears and to our hearts the summons 
of creative power, not less wonderful, not less 
beautiful, not less omnipotent, from lover to lover, 



54 



AFTERGLOW. 



from parent to child, than from David looking 
up with reverent affection into the face of Saul. 
The creative power of love, — with what signifi- 
cance it thrills us with its music and attunes us 
to its divine harmonies ! 

But the angel of life has reserved for us a still 
tenderer and sublimer strain, — the supreme sacri- 
fice of love. 

" Could I wrestle to raise him from sorrow, grow poor to 
enrich, 

To fill up his life, starve my own out, I would." 

That is the spirit which signifies the highest 
form of human affection, — the willingness to 
subordinate one's self for the good of another, 
to lose one's own life to find it in the welfare of 
another. This it is which is symbolized in the 
Christs of history, and not less in every parent 
who really lives in his children, and in every 
human being who willingly, lovingly, unre- 
servedly, makes the peace and happiness of a life 
more or less dependent upon him superior to his 
own. Strange, indeed, it is how we are coming 
to see that there has been a truth, however per- 
verted, lurking within almost every church cere- 
mony and every credal statement. We are saved 



SPIRITUAL AWAKENING. 



55 



by the atoning power of the Christ, has been a 
favorite thought in Christian history. " He 
came, a ransom for many/' have been the words 
on Christian lips. There are several things about 
such ideas that we do not like. We do not feel 
that men need to be saved, in the old sense, at 
all ; and such salvation as is necessary for them 
we feel they must win in no small degree by 
their own efforts. And yet it is true that men 
are helped, purified, uplifted, — in a certain high 
sense, saved — by the consecration, by every con- 
secration, of unselfish love. 

" O Saul, it shall be 
A Face like my face that receives thee ; a Man like to me 
Thou shalt love, and be loved by, forever ; a Hand like this 
hand 

Shall throw open the gates of new life to thee ! 

See the Christ stand ! " 

Stand how? Not as an official personage, hold- 
ing such authority as has been received from an 
external power, but as the ideal of human conse- 
cration to the highest service of humanity — a 
consecration which, because it loves so much, is 
willing to sacrifice so much. The world has not 
always known it ; but it has never been long 
without such Christ-like influences, atoning for 



AFTERGLOW. 



its sins, lighting up its dark places, and trans- 
forming its night into day. Every life cut down 
in the process of growth, which has within it ele- 
ments of beauty and of fragrance, becomes more 
beautiful and more fragrant as it passes to the 
Silent Land. Out of its death some good is 
born, some gentler nature comes. Where it has 
been, the pathway is strewn with flowers, and its 
memory becomes a touchstone of the highest 
virtue. The human heart beats in a higher 
strain to-day when it recalls the Spartan defence 
of Thermopylae, and the message which heroism 
wrote there in letters of blood : " Stranger, tell it 
at Lacedaemon that we died in obedience to her 
sacred laws." There is more of true nobility in 
these United States because Robert G. Shaw sur- 
rendered the brightest prospects, and laid down 
his life with his colored troops in the common 
ditch at Fort Wagner. The blood of martyrs, — 
how often it has been the seed of the Church! 
The death of patriots, — how often it has been 
the people's redemption ! Through personal 
sacrifice, through the devotion of love in its 
humblest and its divinest forms, love of the near 
and the dear, love of country, love of race, love 
of truth, justice, humanity, comes the at-onement. 



SPIRITUAL AWAKENING. 



57 



The last testimony to the worship of the ideal is 
the sacrifice of self in its behalf. The preserva- 
tion of this ideal, the cultivation of enthusiastic 
love for it, — call it by what name you will, — is the 
all-important thing. A true lover always ideal- 
izes the object of his love. A nation of men with 
anything of the poetic instinct always idealizes 
its heroes. Humanity always idealizes its saints. 
Garfield, the individual, is of far less consequence 
than Garfield, the ideal of suffering and sacrifice, 
which was so tenderly enshrined in the hearts of 
the people when the bells rang out his death 
upon the midnight air. Jesus, the man, is of far 
less consequence than Jesus, the ideal of suffer- 
ing and sacrifice, which has been so sacredly 
cherished in the hearts of Christendom. 

It is all these things which harp and voice 
unite in singing to us, — the service of truth and 
humanity, the devotion of love, the supreme sacri- 
fice of love ; it is all these things which bring 
us into harmony with the Universe, and make 
us one with the Divine Power in which — it is 
to-day, as it has always been, true — "we live and 
move and have our being " ; it is ail these things 
which cause us sooner or later to experience 
religion, and to live, wherever we may be, the 
spiritual life. 



AFTERGLOW 



Spiritual awakening, — to some it comes so 
naturally and gently the process is hardly notice- 
able : to others it is a sudden transition, a sudden 
arousing to the beauties of the dawn. Would I 
do all in my power for the object of my love, I 
with all my limitations, I who could never have 
conceived of a tithe of the blessings with which 
that object has been endowed, and doubt that 
He alone will not continue to bless and save it 
"who yet alone can"! Has the divine spark 
which has been so clear and bright and warm in 
me exceeded the clearness, brightness, warmth, 
of the living Flame in which it had its origin, of 
whose nature it partakes, in whom is its destiny? 
No assumption could be more absurd. Human 
love, or rather divine love in the human, indi- 
cates divine love everywhere. Human devotion 
indicates divine devotion. Human care indi- 
cates infinite care. So I find God, so I "o'er- 
take God's own speed in the one way of love." 
And with this o'ertaking a heaven of new life is' 
opened. I become aware as never before of the 
inner meanings of things ; I rise superior to 
material considerations ; I am at one with the 
universe, pitched to its key, in harmony with its 
rhythm. Troubles are still troubles, friction is 



SPIRITUAL AWAKENING. 



59 



still friction, partings are still partings ; but 
space and time become less omnipotent, the spirit 
walks abroad, thought, love, aspiration, assume 
their proper functions, and are no longer subject 
to the old limitations. They bridge all chasms, 
they run along invisible wires to wheresoever in 
all the universe of life a soul unto another soul is 
drawn ; they lift us upward to wherever the ideal 
summons ; they soothe us with somewhat of the 
eternal serenity. All our mistakes, all our fail- 
ures, become stepping-stones to the highest 
success ; all our trials become disciplines to the 
noblest achievements of character. Whatever 
comes to us, we feel the new law. O my soul, 
define him or not define him, God is ; Thought 
is ; Love is. What has been true and beautiful 
and good must continue to be true and beautiful 
and good ; ay, must ever grow and brighten in 
its truth and beauty and goodness. 

" And, oh, all my heart how it loved him ! 99 

Through devotion and through sacrifice direct to 
heaven, here and everywhere, — in this convic- 
tion, in this ecstasy, we feel the new law. And 
as we feel it, conform ourselves to it, attune our 
moods to its leading, the whole atmosphere of 



6o 



AFTERGLOW. 



life becomes richer and more ethereal ; the skies 
are bluer, the stars more lustrous, human affec- 
tions more sacred, human longings more conse- 
crating. In the serenity of a faith which has 
faced the facts and has conquered selfishness, 
we feel that this is a beautiful world ; we become 
thankful for all its opportunities and reconciled 
to all its experiences. Because there is so much 
of love in it, so much of devotion in it, so much 
of divinizing sacrifice in it, — a beautiful world. 
That is the message which comes to us from the 
hearts we hold to our own ; that is the message 
which comes to us from out the Silence. All 
Nature attests it this Sun-day. The spring land- 
scape sings it in the tender touch of color man- 
tling its cheeks and mingling with its brown and 
green and gray. 

" And the little brooks witnessing murmur, persistent and 
low, 

With their obstinate, all but hushed voices, — "E'en so! 
it is so ! " 



"The Star! the Star!" 



"THE STAR! THE STAR!" 



That is a wonderful description of the meeting 
of the three wise men which General Wallace 
has given us in his "Tale of the Christ." Led 
of the Spirit, the Egyptian, the Hindu, and the 
Greek mount their camels, and go forth to find 
the redeemer of the world. We can see them in 
imagination, each pursuing his solitary way over 
the trackless desert, under the scorching sun by 
day, at night in the silent companionship of the 
stars, toward what is to prove the sacred place 
of meeting. The Egyptian arrives first, dis- 
mounts, looks with hand over his eyes to the 
distant horizon, exclaims confidently, "They will 
come, they will come," and then pitches his 
tent, spreads his carpet, and prepares to receive 
his expected fellow-travellers. His every move- 
ment is intensely thoughtful and reverent, as of 
one who feels the sanctity of a holy mission. 
Again and again he looks, until at length a dark 
speck appears in the East, grows larger and 



64 



AFTERGLOW. 



larger, and finally assumes the shape of a camel 
like his own, with a rider on the same sacred mis- 
sion as himself. It is the Hindu. As the dusky 
son of India steps from his ship of the desert to 
the sand, the two reverently embrace. While 
they are yet talking together, the Greek appears ; 
and the three proceed to the repast which the 
Egyptian has prepared. As they seat themselves 
facing each other, their heads instinctively bend 
forward, their hands cross upon their breasts, 
and, speaking together, they say aloud this sim- 
ple grace, — 

" Father of all, — God ! — what we have here is 
of thee. Take our thanks and bless us, that we 
may continue to do thy will," 

Then each tells the others the story of his life, 
leading up to their moment of meeting. After 
the last has finished, they all rise, look at each 
other, and then by a common impulse join hands. 
"When we have found the Lord," exclaims the 
Egyptian, "all will kneel to him in homage with 
us ! And, when we part to go our separate ways, 
the world will have learned a new lesson, — that 
heaven may be won, not by the sword, not by 
human wisdom, but by faith, love, and good 
works." And then, runs the story, " there is si- 



" THE STAR ! THE STAR ! " 



65 



lence, broken by sighs and sanctified with tears ; 
for the joy that fills them may not be stayed. . . 
Presently their hands fall apart, and they go out 
of the tent. The desert is still as the sky. The 
sun is sinking fast. A little while, and they strike 
their tent, mount their camels, and set out single 
file, led by the Egyptian. Their course is due 
west, into the chilly night. The animals swing 
forward in steady trot, keeping the line and the 
intervals so exactly that those following seem to 
tread in the tracks of the leader. The riders 
speak not once. By and by the moon comes 
up. And as the three tall white figures speed, 
with soundless tread, through the opalescent 
light, they appear like spectres flying from hate- 
ful shadows. Suddenly in the air before them, 
not farther up than a low hill-top, flares a lam- 
bent flame. As they look at it, the apparition 
contracts into a focus of dazzling lustre. Their 
hearts beat fast, their souls thrill, and they shout 
as with one voice, 'The Star! the Star!' " 

I suppose, friends, that we are all in search of 
a redeemer of the world, — not indeed in a man- 
ger, but in our own hearts and lives ; not in some 
far distant country, but on that little spot of 
earth where it is given us to stand, and to grow. 



66 



AFTERGLOW. 



Dark the outlook, full of blind, and almost hope- 
less struggle the days, until we learn who and 
what that redeemer is, and plainly "discern the 
Star that shall guide us into his sacred presence. 
Riding our ambitions across the sands of time, 
sooner or later the vision comes to us that we 
are to find the divine in the human, and that the 
way to the divine thus enshrined will be revealed 
to us when in the silent watches of our own souls, 
or in the rare and high communion of kindred 
souls, the mood becomes one of humility and rev- 
erence and longing. Then we journey inward to 
ourselves, and listen by the way. Then we rise 
superior to mercenary considerations, and look 
aloft with firm and fearless heart. 

Who is this redeemer of the world, whose 
cradle is my own life ? What is the Star which 
shall guide me into the presence of my lord and 
saviour ? The name of this redeemer is Cha?-ac- 
ter. No age and no land has a monopoly of 
him. God touches a soul, and he is born. God 
surrounds a soul with an atmosphere, and he 
lives and grows. He is not Judean, he is not 
Hindu, he is not Greek : he is human. His mis- 
sion is not to one race and clime : it is to all 
races and all climes. 



" THE STAR ! THE STAR ! " 



6 7 



What is character ? It is that indescribable 
somewhat which we sense in each other, but 
which we always find it difficult to define and 
express. Emerson speaks of it as that in a man 
which outruns his words and his acts. "We 
cannot find," he says, "the smallest part of the 
personal weight of Washington in his exploits, 
nor the authority of the name of Schiller in his 
books." That is to say there was something 
about these men greater than anything they said 
or did. We always feel that, in the presence of a 
strong, well-balanced, upright personage. How 
quickly we note it in the public speaker or singer, 
intuitively discovering whether the performance 
is mechanical or has a soul behind it ! The 
finest relations in the world, both public and pri- 
vate, are interwoven of these imponderable 
threads. Did you ever know any one into whose 
presence you could not come without feeling his 
or her personal weight of harmonized strength, 
even though no word were spoken, or thing 
done ? Is there the memory of a soul, or the 
actual presence of a soul anywhere in the uni- 
verse for thee, that carries with it this composing 
and uplifting and consecrating influence which 
cannot be argued, but is to thee, and to all just 



68 



AFTERGLOW. 



in proportion as they know it well, its own un- 
answerable demonstration ? W ell, that is Char- 
acter. It is that about the human which makes 
it a part of the universal and eternal, moral and 
spiritual forces of the world, just as we recognize 
the foaming sea and the rock-ribbed mountains 
as parts of the material forces of the world. 
Think for a moment of any precious life within 
thine own heart circle, or belonging to the more 
public sphere of mankind, from which radiates 
out such an influence as I have described, and 
tell me if that life does not seem very close to 
the universe and all that therein is ; tell me if it 
does not seem a part of the eternal harmonies, 
out of which, in common with the spheres, it has 
derived its own heavenly music and its own en- 
chanting rhythm. Character is that which is 
superior to all outward circumstance. Character 
is strength, sweetness, the upward look, blend- 
ing in the beauty of a personality at one with 
itself and at one with the universe. Character 
is God in humanity. This is the redeemer for 
which, consciously or unconsciously, we all wait, 
which we all need, which we all set out to find. 

u Not farther off, but farther in, — 
Such is the nature of thy quest; 



" THE STAR ! THE STAR ! " 



6 9 



They heaven find who heaven win, 
The one true Christ is in thy breast." 

But how shall we come into his presence, say, 
rather, how shall we make our own beings so in- 
viting to him that he will gladly come and dwell 
with us ? " The Star ! the Star ! " what is 
that ? Nothing more nor less than an all-con- 
trolling, ennobling purpose in life ; a steady, 
serene pursuit of the better ; the worship of an 
ideal. All life implies movement, all exaltation 
of life implies upward movement. Lowell, in his 
description of the opening days of summer, 
sings : — 

" Joy comes, grief goes, we know not how ; 
Everything is happy now, 

Everything is upward striving. 
' Tis as easy now for the heart to be true 
As for grass to be green, or for skies to be blue, 

y Tis the natural way of living." 

In the perpetual summer of a worthy life, up- 
ward striving is always the natural way of living. 
Life, indeed, becomes a trackless desert, out of 
whose disappointments and struggles and mis- 
understandings and sorrows there seems no way, 
when we lose sight of our guiding star, and can 
no longer follow its dear leading. 



7 o 



AFTERGLOW. 



I can imagine two young men on the threshold 
of active life, preparing to meet the exigencies 
which the days, the months, and the years shall 
bring. " All before them lies the way," — not a 
sharply denned road from whose well-worn path 
there is no chance of turning, but open fields 
and mighty forests and flowing rivers to be 
traversed and felled and forded by the native 
forces and the trained skill which they shall bring 
to the task. Gayly, proudly, thought] essly, one 
of them steps forward with that kind of alertness 
which he thinks will enable him to get the great- 
est amount of happiness, the greatest amount of 
honor, the greatest amount of financial return, 
out of the fleeting moments as they pass. He 
looks about him on the level where he stands : 
he has not learned to look up, or to look in. 
As time wears on, some degree of success, as the 
world counts success, comes to him. He has 
given all his efforts to making money, and he has 
made some ; he has given all his efforts to obtain- 
ing political distinction and office, and political 
distinction and office have brought him their sat- 
isfactions. He has learned to measure his ca- 
reer in the world, with the dollars in his treasury 
or with the votes of his fellow-citizens. But by 



"the star! the star!" 71 

and by disaster comes to him, — his investments 
prove insecure, he loses his fortune. By and by, 
in the ups and downs of politics, he is laid aside 
and forgotten, and ceases to be a factor in the 
management of the community, the State, or the 
nation. Everything upon which he has learned 
to depend has left him. He is having his first 
lesson in the great truth that the things which 
are seen are temporal ; and, unfortunately, he has 
yet no conception of the companion truth, that 
the things which are not seen are eternal. He 
looks about him : there is the open field, there 
the forest, there the river, there the sands of the 
desert ; but there are no guide-boards, no mile- 
stones, and he has not learned to look up, and to 
see the Star. What is it all for ? For the first 
time in his life he asks himself that question, and 
seeks in vain a satisfactory answer. He has not 
found his redeemer, and as yet does not know 
how to go to work to find him. Do you not 
think there are a great many men in the world 
with just about such careers as I have described ? 
If it were not so, I believe the question, " Is life 
worth living ? " would never have been asked. 

But, now, how about the other young man? 
He is so constructed, his mood is such, that the 



72 



AFTERGLOW. 



query, " What is it all for ? " comes to him on the 
threshold of his active participation in human 
affairs. He sees that work is a means, not an 
end ; that wealth is a means, not an end ; that 
office is a means, not an end ; that life itself is 
a means and an opportunity, not an end. He 
questions, he thinks ; and out of it all he comes 
to have a sober, serious purpose. Out of this 
purpose — not all at once perhaps, but in the 
course of time — evolves a distinct recognition 
that he is here in this world to make the most pos- 
sible of himself and to help others to make the 
most possible of themselves. And so he devotes 
himself to ennobling studies, forms high compan- 
ionships, paints for himself in the world of the 
imagination uplifting aims. His mind goes out 
in new and broadening channels ; his heart re- 
sponds in sympathy to human suffering, and is 
stirred by the sense of justice in the presence of 
human wrongs ; his soul, though he may hardly 
know the name, still less be able to define the 
reality, aspires constantly toward the better. If 
he should give utterance to the general spirit 
which pervades his being, tones his mood, and 
leads him on, it would be in some such words as 
were the natural expression of a sweet, sunshiny, 



" THE STAR ! THE STAR ! " 



73 



serious young life: "We must do what we can, 
and be as much for other people as we can, to 
rind happiness, and ever reach upward to the 
ideal." Time wears on, and he enters business 
to be recognized as the honest and upright mer- 
chant, or he becomes a mechanic who leaves no 
flaw in his work, or he takes up the profession 
of the law to plead for justice and equity, or he 
practises medicine to promote health and get at 
the root causes of disease, or he preaches in the 
pulpit, that he may lead himself and all men to a 
sense of the spiritual life. Whatever he does, 
whatever he says, he impresses you as one who 
has seen the lambent flame, and who rides steadily 
and persistently and safely forward under the 
guidance of the Star. His plans may miscarry, 
the world's wealth may not flow into his coffers, 
disappointments may meet him, sorrow may seem 
at times to crush him, he may be driven at last in 
many of his deepest experiences into the solitude 
of his own soul ; but he lifts his eye, and there is 
the Star, and he moves on, and on again, to a new 
realization of the redeeming power which makes 
him one with the invisible and the eternal. 
Have we ever known, any of us, such a career as 
this ? Whether in private or in public life, such 



74 



AFTERGLOW. 



a one is a pledge of the divinity in humanity, 
and a hint that somehow, in ways we cannot un- 
derstand, " God's greatness flows around our in- 
completeness, round our restlessness his rest." 

The Star ! the Star ! that shall guide us to 
where the redeemer lies ; persistent search for 
the better, the worship of the ideal which shall 
lead us to the highest realizations of character, — 
oh, how vital these are in the individual and the 
collective life of humanity ! I see a girl, giddy, 
superficial, frivolous, passing from one sensation 
to another, as if such were the bread of life. She 
drifts unthinkingly into womanhood, perchance 
wifehood and motherhood, without ever feeling, 
apparently, " that one increasing purpose which 
through the ages runs." She grows old with a 
mind full of doubts and a heart full of misgiv- 
ings, and a mood over all which speaks of a sort 
of negative and, on the whole, rather hopeless 
resignation. I see another girl whose nature 
has somehow been keyed to another and a 
higher strain. Bright she may be, entertaining 
she may be, but always in a way which indicates 
weight of character underlying the lightest mood. 
Wisdom has whispered in her ear, saying, Seek 
knowledge, and she seeks it ; love has whispered 



" THE STAR ! THE STAR ! " 



75 



to her heart, saying, Be sweet, kind, gentle to 
others, and she is so. Soul life has asserted it- 
self within her, saying, Behold the inner mean- 
ings of things : let every day find thy real self 
twenty-four hours' march nearer to all those at- 
tainments which moth and rust cannot corrupt, 
and which thieves breaking through cannot carry 
away. And every day finds her just so. Thus 
she makes for herself an infinitely sacred career. 
The pecuniary returns may come or not come, 
wifehood and motherhood even may come or 
not come : the highest, the noblest, the purest 
womanhood has come ; and wherever men touch 
that, come into the presence of that, behold that 
from afar, they shall tread more reverently, 
" thinking they walk in hallowed cathedrals." 

Good friend, can you see your Star ? You who 
are a merchant, standing behind your counter, 
sitting at your desk, have you an ideal which 
means absolute honesty in all your dealings, is 
every article you sell for pure absolutely pure, do 
your measurements hold out, is your word as 
good as your bond ? Mechanic in your work- 
shop, do you make every joint and mould every 
casting and put on every coat of paint as if the 
eyes of mankind were upon you ? Teacher in 



7 6 



AFTERGLOW. 



the school-room, are you in command of yourself, 
are you calling out the best in the children by 
first letting the highest thought and the noblest 
purpose call out the best in you ? Doctor by the 
bedside, are you studying health more than dis- 
ease, are you more anxious to teach people how 
to keep well than how to get well ? Attorney in 
the office or in the court-room, is there less of 
quarrel and more of harmony in the world be- 
cause of thee ? Minister, at the desk and on the 
street, is there less of sectarianism and more of 
faith, less of selfishness and more of love, less 
of the downward and more of the upward look; 
because of thee ? Fathers and mothers, is the 
world better, is there more of sweetness in it, 
more of trust in it, more of love in it, because 
of thy fatherhood and motherhood ? Office- 
holder, little or great, is thy ward better off, 
thy city, thy State, thy country, better off, be- 
cause thou art a holder of office ? 

Good friends all, whatever your vocations, is 
the work in which you are engaged part and 
parcel of that which helps humanity forward 
from good to better, and from better thence 
again to better, in infinite progression ? Do you 
see the Star, or do clouds of self-interest and 



" THE STAR ! THE STAR ! " 



77 



passion and material prosperity obscure it? 
These are searching questions, if we press them 
home each one for himself. Few people, indeed, 
there are who do not at times grovel in the dust. 
Few movements there are which do not at times 
lower their standard. Often, indeed, one finds 
himself surrounded by the wrecks of his ambi- 
tions, his aims, his ideals. Often, indeed, it 
requires all he can command of philosophy and 
faith to keep his eyes fixed upon the Star ; but he 
must do that, else he does not find his redeemer, 
and, not finding his redeemer, he is, in a sense of 
which the theologians never dreamed, without 
God in the world. The Star ! the Star ! does it 
summon us all to precisely the same tasks ? By 
no means. Its call is to be and to do the best 
that is in you ; to meet the duty which lies near- 
est, in that exaltation of spirit which makes the 
action fine. It may be the common affairs of 
life with which you are dealing, — the cares of 
housekeeping, the anxieties of trade, the drudg- 
ery of mere routine work. Then your Star 
summons you to be faithful in these, to see that 
they do not master you, but that you master them. 

It may be that you are so constructed as to be 
especially sensitive, easily hurt by misunder- 



73 



AFTERGLOW. 



standings, easily made suspicious by some 
thoughtless word or some inconsiderate act. 
Then your ideal summons you, in the depths of 
your own sacred experiences, to keep sweet, to 
look for the best in motive always, to believe in 
the goodness which may dwell in the smallest 
and in the largest thing until, beyond all ques- 
tion, it is proven not to be there. Are you facing 
inexpressible and ever-growing sorrow ? Is 
separation from the loved of thy heart, in the 
body or out of the body, what has come to thee ? 
Then from the distance, perchance from out the 
deep mysteries of the unseen, thy Star throws 
around thee a sweet influence, scarcely articu- 
lated in words, to keep thee strong to meet 
worthily the heaviest trials, to bear worthily the 
heaviest burdens, and to become day by day, in 
thy yearning solitude, a better man. 

What we most need to make us whole or holy, 
to make our lives, a symphony, — that it is to 
which our Star summons us. In the sacred se- 
clusion of our own individuality we look up to it, 
we find its deepest significance, and we follow 
its leading to new attainments of noble charac- 
ter. 



"the star! the star!" 



79 



"All that I know 

Of a certain star 
Is, it can throw, 

Like the angled spar 
Now a dart of red, 

Now a dart of blue ; 
Till my friends have said 

They would fain see, too, 
My star that dartles the red and the blue ! 

Then it stops like a bird ; like a flower, hangs furled ; 
They must solace themselves with the Saturn above it. 

What matter to me if their star is a world ? 
Mine has opened its soul to me : therefore, I love it." 

Tread lightly, tread respectingly, tread rever- 
ently, when you enter the sanctifying presence of 
a soul bowed in worship before its Star. 

Nor let us forget that men collectively need to 
have their Star, too. What a difference between 
a friendship based on mercenary considerations 
and one in which two souls look up to find each 
other ! What a difference between a reform 
movement in which everybody is asserting him- 
self and one in which everybody is enthusiasti- 
cally devoted to an inspiring cause ! What a 
difference between a political party which is 
looking for the spoils and one which is serving 
divine principles ! What a difference between a 



8o 



AFTERGLOW. 



church which in matters of belief, or in matters 
of form and ceremony, thanks God it is not as 
other men are, and one which in essential spirit 
and purpose senses the good in all men, and 
strives to lift it higher toward the skies ! 

Not now alone the three wise men of the 
East moving, spectre-like, upon their camels over 
the sands of the desert, but all the wisdom and 
all the heart and all the conscience of humanity 
are out in search of their redeemer. Along the 
paths of life's common duties and its great 
tasks come youth and maidenhood, with hope- 
ful inquiring gaze, feeling the onward propulsion ; 
come mature manhood and womanhood, strong 
to do and to dare ; comes age, crowned with 
serenity and peace ; come eager hearts ; come 
loving hearts ; come sorrowing hearts ; comes 
every aspiring thought, pure feeling, uplifting 
impulse of mankind. All strain their eyes, as 
they move forward in expectation and trust ; 
and as the lambent flame appears before them 
and contracts into a f@cus of dazzling lustre, 
their souls thrill, and they shout aloud with 
thankful voices, The Star ! the Star ! 

Dear friends, are you and I in the glad pro- 
cession, can our eyes see the vision and our 



" THE STAR ! THE STAR ! " 8 1 

voices join the acclaim ? Then not in Judea, 
and in a manger, but wherever we are, and in 
our own souls, shall we each one of us be able 
to say, " I know that my redeemer liveth "; then 
shall we, each one of us, bring to him, not " the 
gifts of gold and frankincense and myrrh," but 
the more precious offering of our undying loyalty 
and love. 



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